What can be said with confidence is that she was wounded, that the wound was serious and permanent, and that she treated it herself to avoid the medical examination that would have exposed her.
Additional skirmishes are noted in various accounts, including activity in December 1782 near Peekskill Hollow. The army she served in was not idle in this period, even if the major operations of the Revolution were complete. The final year of the war, in the Hudson Valley theater, involved real military work in difficult conditions.
## The Assignment to General Paterson
On April 1, 1783, a significant change came in Deborah Sampson’s assignment. She was made a waiter — effectively a personal aide — to General John Paterson.
This appointment has sometimes been described as a kind of reward or recognition. The role of waiter to a general officer was not a menial domestic position in the modern sense; it involved proximity to command, responsibility for the general’s personal affairs and communications, and required a soldier who was regarded as trustworthy, capable, and reliable. That she was selected for this role suggests she had performed competently enough in the Light Infantry Company to earn a measure of confidence from her officers.
The assignment to Paterson would eventually contribute to the circumstances of her exposure. When unrest among Continental soldiers over unpaid wages prompted General Washington to send Paterson’s unit to Philadelphia in the summer of 1783, Deborah Sampson traveled with the general.
Philadelphia in 1783 was in the grip of illness. A combination of smallpox and measles was circulating. She fell seriously ill — accounts describe a high fever — and was taken to Dr. Barnabas Binney.